The High Court has issued a ‘blocking order’ that will cut off online streams for people who are illegally watching Premier League football matches.
It comes after the Premier League was awarded a High Court blocking order for the forthcoming 2017-18 season.
Dubbed the ‘biggest ever crackdown’ on illegal streaming, the order will help the league intensify its crackdown on the illicit use of pre-loaded Kodi boxes and other illegal devices.
‘This blocking order is a game-changer in our efforts to tackle the supply and use of illicit streams of our content’, Premier League Director of Legal Services, Kevin Plumb told BBC.
The order means UK Internet Service Providers (ISPs) will have to stop people illegally streaming matches.
In the UK, you can only watch Premier League games legally on Sky Sports and BT Sport. Highlights can be seen on BBC Sport.
‘It will allow us to quickly and effectively block and disrupt the illegal broadcast of Premier League football via any means, including so called ‘pre-loaded Kodi boxes’, Mr Plumb said.
‘The protection of our copyright, and the investment made by our broadcast partners, is hugely important to the Premier League and the future health of English football.’
In the 2016-17 season the Premier League obtained a similar order for the last two months of the season.
The court order allowed Premier League bosses to blanket block internet servers.
Around 5,000 server IP addresses were blocked as a result.
The league previously only had the power to block individual streams, which were easy for hosts to re-establish using a different link.
Sky and BT Sport paid more than £5bn ($6.6bn) for rights to show Premier League matches for three seasons.
Last month Premier League bosses were debating whether to livestream games directly in a bid to end illegal streams, rumours suggested.
Organisers were considering whether streaming matches in the US and UK would significantly cut the value of its multi-billion-pound TV deals, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.
As many as a third of football fans watch the sport illegally, with many streaming games via illicit websites or through prohibited add-ons to so-called Kodi boxes.
Kodi is a free service that streams apps and on-demand services onto your TV.
The software, which is legal, can even be downloaded onto an Amazon Fire stick.
Commonly the ‘fully loaded’ boxes let users watch Premier League games or Sky Movies without paying a subscription fee.
While rights fees for matches are soaring, viewing figures for sports broadcasters such as Sky and NBC are plummeting.
Last season saw the biggest fall in live Premier League TV viewing figures for seven years, with both Sky and BT hit by the drop.
Sky saw a 14 per cent fall in viewing numbers, while BT channels dropped by 2 per cent.
END
Be the first to comment